Fintech Analysts Predict Bitcoin, Altcoins Boost: Report

A panel of 14 crypto experts issues a monthly report on top 10 and top three trending coins for 2018

Economic experts have long been split into two camps– first supporting crypto and, therefore, bullish on it, and the second– the old-school economists who see Bitcoin and other tokens merely as a bubble. This expert panel seems to consists of crypto optimists, although not all coins they mention will, according to them, make huge gains.

TRON (TRX)

According to the panelists, TRON will show the biggest gains by the end of the year. By December 2018 the coin will rise 342 percent. On June 28 the coin traded at $0.039 and according to the forecast, by the end of 2018 it will reach $0.173.

Cardano (ADA) and EOS

The panel expects this blockchain coin to show the second biggest growth after TRX by the end of December– 299 percent. EOS is predicted to reach a 246-percent increase.

Bitcoin (BTC)

Perhaps, the most optimistic forecast was made regarding the major cryptocoin, the one that so many are betting on and which took the threshold of $20,000 last December. The experts predict BTC to reach $15,372 by December 2018.

Although back in January the same research panel predicted a much bigger rise- $33,000– their current outlook still remains quite positive.

Monero (XMR)

This anonymous coin, according to the report, will achieve the smallest growth– only 66 percent. This is the second time in a row that the expert panel has forecast the smallest rise by the year-end for this asset.

Short-term predictions

The panel has also issued an outlook for coins by Aug. 1, 2018. TRON and Cardano are expected to put on gains of 207 percent and 85 percent, respectively. IOTA is supposed to rise only one percent.

BitMart Exchange Teams Up with Paxful to Give Its Customers More Benefits

Crypto trading firm BitMart spreads word about its new partnership with P2P exchange Paxful, both firms intend to gain more scalability and liquidity

BitMart has publicized its integration of Paxful’s Bitcoin trading service. This will enable clients of BitMart to get more payment features. Also, customers of Paxful will be able to use BitMart and trade its almost 200 crypto pairs.

Benefits of this collaboration

The reps of the firms state that this cooperation will allow improving customer experience by giving users more trading opportunities.

BitMart founder and CEO Sheldon Xia has mentioned that partnering with Paxful will enable the exchange to attract new customers who previously had no access to crypto trading.

BitMart started off two years ago. This crypto exchange is located in the Cayman Islands, but it operates branches in the US, South Korea, etc. The platform officially has nearly 700,000 clients, and its trading volume exceeds $70 mln per day.

The CEO also added that working on one team with Paxful will let users have a better choice of payment options – gift cards, bank transfers, etc.

About Paxful

Paxful is a decentralized marketplace where one trader can buy BTC directly from another. Users there add their adverts about selling BTC and mention the way they wish to be paid.

As soon as the buyer conducts a payment, he or she receives their Bitcoin from escrow directly into their Paxful storage space. Those who purchase pay no fees to the platform. It takes 1 percent of each deal from sellers.

The company reports it has one million active users from around the world on a daily basis.

The rollout is coming in a few weeks

The blog post states that Coinbase Wallet users will be able to download an update with Litecoin support in a few weeks on the App Store or Google Play Store respectively. Litecoin support will be available from the get-go once the app is updated. You will simply have to choose the ‘Receive’ option on the main wallet page in order to deposit LTC to your wallet.

Coinbase keeps snubbing XRP

The announcement was flooded with tweets from users asking Coinbase to add XRP. Everyone’s favorite remittance and settlement token is nowhere to be found on the roster of supported digital coins.

University of Michigan Eyes Continuing to Invest in Andreessen Horowitz’s Digital Asset Fund

The University of Michigan, with its spare finances of around $12 bln, may keep its collaboration with the A16z crypto investment firm

The university began investing into the A16z fund set up by the Andreessen Horowitz company last summer when it transferred $300 mln into its management. At the moment, the university is considering a change to invest some more. The amount of funds assigned for this purpose has not been disclosed.

Crypto fund for institutional investors

In summer last year, the top financial company Andreessen Horowitz set up a branch to invest in technologies based on crypto assets. Other media outlets reported that Yale University also took part.

Chris Dixon from Andreessen Horowitz mentioned back then that the company intends to invest into the crypto industry on a regular basis, even if the market situation worsens. He even insisted that no crypto winter will stop them from doing it.

Pension funds and universities are going for virtual coins

In autumn last year, the University of Michigan’s spare capital reached the amount of $12 mln. The employee in charge of investments, Erik Lundberg, back then said that this money can be used to increase the present endowment in real terms.

Pension funds and endowment funds are now actively investing in the DLT and crypto spheres. A week ago, reports emerged in the media that several pension funds provided investments for the crypto fund set up by the Morgan Creek Capital venture company – adding up to a total of $40 mln.

The fund opened by Morgan Creek accepts money for investing from hospitals, insurance firms and universities.

Head of Coinbase Believes Late CEO of QuadrigaCX Did Not Plan Fraud

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has left comments on Twitter saying he reckons QuadrigaCX did not plan an exit scam

On Thursday, Brian Armstrong, the head of the US-based crypto exchange Coinbase, contributed to the numerous discussions that have been centered on the subject of the recent QuadrigaCX collapse.

Wanted to share a summary of what we believe happened to QuadrigaCX. We did our own internal research, including some blockchain analytics, to see if we could help. Important to note that this is just our best guess. Take it as *pure speculation*, nothing more.

Brian Armstrong: QuadrigaCX CEO is not guilty

In several tweets, Armstrong expressed an assumption that the exchange had planned no fraud, despite the current turmoil around the $190 mln that it owes customers and has not been paid out yet.

Customers of the no longer operational QuadrigaCX are now having heated battles, using their lawyers in an attempt to recover the funds the exchange owes them.

Why their funds have disappeared is still a big question. The head of the company, Gerald Cotton, passed away at the end of 2018. The CEO was the only person to have access to the laptop which managed the cold wallets. He never mentioned the location of the private keys in the will made two weeks before his death.

Besides, the investigation undertaken by the community found out that allegedly none of those cold wallets actually existed. This also being discussed in court at the moment – the information shared by Quadriga reps does not match the investigation results.

Coinbase looks into the matter too

Armstrong and his team conducted their own research on the subject. As a result, an assumption emerged that several months of Quadriga’s work raised questions about mismanagement.

Presently, auditor Ernst & Young is in charge of the wallets and accounts of the defunct crypto platform. The other day, QuadrigaCX sent the crypto that was remaining on its wallets to the accounts of the company.

CME BTC Futures Breaking Their Previous Records as 2019 Begins

In its internal email, CME Group announces that this year their BTC futures are beating all previous sales records even before the start

CME Group, the Chicago-located exchange, has recorded a splash of interest from investors who are buying BTC derivatives at the start of 2019.

Good start of the year for CME

The company’s internal e-mail says that on February 19, the company made a new record by selling 18,338 futures contracts on BTC. That is equal to nearly 91,700 BTC or $360 mln.

In November 2018, the record set by the exchange was a little smaller, says the email:

“Q1 2019 is off to a strong start, ADV has improved to 4,630 contracts (23,150 equivalent bitcoin), up ~13% from Q4 2018 while [open interest] rose to 4,076 contracts, an improvement of 21.5% over Q4 2018.”

As for the customers, since the moment the exchange started working, it has had more than 2,000 accounts for trading BTC futures, belonging to 30 unique institutional clients. By the way, this category of clients has become more interested in the product.

Since November last year, CME has gotten over 40 new clients of this scale. They are also dubbed LOIHs (Large Open Interest Holders), that is, an institution that owns 25 futures on Bitcoin.

The BTC derivatives market

The BTC derivatives market is much wider than just CME. Since the time it first launched this product, other players have entered the business too. Among them are major exchanges, like OKEx, BitMEX, etc – these are the biggest players on the market at the moment.

Now this market includes not only futures but also crypto options and swaps, and the amount of players in the market keeps increasing.

Other crypto trading heavyweights intend to release their crypto derivatives exchanges in the US in 2019. Among them are Bakkt, SeedCX, and ErisX.

Bakkt plans to offer BTC derivatives, and SeedCX as well as ErisX will offer futures on several coins. Among those will probably be Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Binance reportedly is also considering a move to the crypto derivatives market.